The History of Kirtan

In the far off exotic land today known as India, our ancestors lived as yogis in the rural communities called ashramas. These yogis were also called rishis, which means“seer”, because they cultivated their “third eye”. This is the mind’s eye of inner spiritual consciousness, which shone in them like an internal blazing mid-summer sun.

They cultivated their inner eye through meditation practices such as kirtan, and by proper understanding of the associations between the causes and consequences for all things,allowing them to “see” past, present, and future. Although they live simple life, the life of the yogis was rich with the jewels of satisfaction, peace, spirituality, and a universal harmony between humans, animals and the rest of nature.All parties in this relationship flourished like a perennial Spring with abundant beauty, fragrance, vitality, and growth. The yogis didn’t work particularly hard because Mother Earth provided them her rich bounty of sweet juicy fruits, nutritious grains, and juicy vegetables without the need for cultivation and sowing fields with seeds for food. As the yogis were vegetarian so there was also no need to hunt and kill innocent animals.


Additionally, Mother Earth generously sent forth her valuable minerals including jewels and gold to the surface of the earth; these the yogis used for making medicine, ornaments, and for worship - expressing appreciation to the Divine. Mother Earth’s seasons were as predictable as a Swiss watch, such that yogis didn’t need watches, they could accurately tell the time and the date from the weather. In this harmony, the clouds only sent rain at night when the yogis slept, enough to properly irrigate nature’s vegetation, so the sun could shine pleasantly all day long. Without the need for hard work, the yogis devoted their time to nurturing beautiful relationships called yoga or links between each other, with Nature whom they addressed as Mother Nature, and with the Supreme Divine whom, amongst many other Holy Names, was called The Universal Father. They did this through the inner cultivation of spiritual practices that were given by the Supreme Divine at the beginning of time and handed down from one yogi teacher to the next, in an unbroken chain of disciplic succession.